Italy working life rises but 2/nd to last in EU, ahead Romania

(ANSA) - ROMA, 27 LUG - The average length of working life in Italy is growing but at 32.9 years it is at the bottom of the EU ranking (average of 36. 9 years), leaving only Romania behind.
    This is according to Eurostat tables on 2023 based on an estimate of the number of years a person, currently 15 years old, should be in the labor force (i.e., employed or unemployed) during his or her lifetime. The Italian figure is related to the low expected working life expectancy for women with just 28.3 years in 2023 compared to the 34.7 average in the EU. In Italy, however, women's working lives have risen by more than 7 years since 2000.
    Overall in the EU the average working life is 36.9 years with a peak in the Netherlands (43.7 years) followed by Sweden (43.1).
    Worse than Italy is only Romania with 32.2 expected years.
    Overall in the EU average, the gender gap in 2023 was 4.3 years.
    For men, the expected length of working life in Italy is 37.2 years with a much smaller gap than the EU average for women (39.0 years in 2023). In the EU, the longest durations are recorded in the Netherlands (45.7 years), Sweden (44.1 years), Denmark and Ireland (both 42.8 years) and the shortest in Croatia (35.4).    For women, the average working life span in the EU is 34.7 years, with the longest recorded in Sweden (41.9 years), followed by the Netherlands and Estonia (both 41.5 years), while the shortest was recorded in Italy (28.3 years), Romania (28.5 years) and Greece (30.6 years).  In fact, Italian women have an expected working life that has grown consistently (7.2 years from 2000 to 2023) and faster than the EU average (6 years over the same period).Only with respect to 2022 has the growth been 0.7 years. In practice, in most EU countries women's working life expectancy has increased more than men's, with the only exceptions being Denmark and Romania.In Malta, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Estonia and Cyprus, the increase was significantly higher for women than for men.In Bulgaria, Slovenia, Denmark and Sweden, the increases for men and women were about equal.In Italy it increased by about 2.6 years compared with 2.2 years on average in the EU. (ANSA).